The Challengers

Enterprise languages, like Java and .NET, dominate corporate development. But, in the open source CMS market, web languages, such as PHP, reign. In spite of this, five open source content management solutions developed using enterprise languages made it into the top twenty list.

Liferay (news, site) and DotNetNuke (news, site) led the market segment. However, their positions are far from secure. Umbraco (news, site) is closing on DotNetNuke. In key metrics like search interest, Umbraco is rapidly gaining ground.

.Net CMS search interest

Umbraco had one of the fastest growing developer support communities, and the project showed strong growth in site popularity. Umbraco is heavily targeted at developers and may require more technical knowledge to leverage than DotNetNuke, which has many administrative features targeted at non-technical audiences. It might be this difference in focus that caused Umbraco to lag behind DotNetNuke in reputation metrics.

In the Java area, the definition of CMS is a bit blurred. LifeRay, the leader, has traditionally been a portal platform, while challenger, Alfresco's core (news, site) is enterprise content management. Both however, play in the web content management space. In many metrics, like unique site visitors, LifeRay's lead over Alfresco is very narrow.

unique site visitors

LifeRay emerged as the leader due to its impressive installation, support and reputation metrics. However, observers should watch closely in 2011 to see if Alfresco pulls ahead in this very tight race.

Projects to Watch

Another CMS that emerged in 2010 as a project to watch was Concrete5 (news, site). This is the first time that the project has made the top twenty since waters&stone began evaluating the open source CMS market.

Concrete5 showed the largest growth of any system in the report in the developer support and search engine visibilities metrics. The system also finished in top ten for number of installations. Although this is the bottom of the top half, it is still significant for a two year old platform.

Concrete5 ranked in the middle or at the bottom of many metrics, but still showed measurable growth this year. If Concrete5 keeps up its present momentum, its future will be promising.

Given the growth of the open source content management market, I'm sure everyone will have an opinion on who should have been recognized as the "next big thing." Did your CMS platform make the cut?